Farming profitably in a changing climate: a risk management approach

Climate science has made enormous progress over the last two decades in understanding the nature of earth's climate and the changes that are taking place. Under climate change projections, we can say with some confidence that the Australian climate will continue to become hotter, and temperature-related extreme events are likely to increase in frequency. However, we cannot yet project with any reasonable level of confidence changes to rainfall and the occurrence of drought. So although there is strong evidence for the reality of climate change, there is still considerable uncertainty associated with projections of precisely how climate change will unfold in the future, particularly at regional and local scales where most farming management decisions are made. Adapting to such an uncertain future demands a flexible approach based on assessing, analysing and responding to the risks posed by a changing climate. This paper examines a risk management approach to farming in a variable and changing climate, based on experience gained in the insurance industry which is one of the first major industries to be impacted by climate change losses. Governments, businesses and individuals must consider the implications of a variable and changing climate as a normal part of decision-making based on risk, just as they would for other risks, such as market price and fuel price movements, labour costs etc. The paper also discusses briefly how advances in information technology have enabled information to be accessed and widely distributed, and showcases four best practice spatial IT website tools developed by the BRS to assist farmers and policy makers to manage risk - the National Agricultural Monitoring System (NAMS), the Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA) Rainfall to Pasture Growth Outlook Tool, the Multi-Criteria Analysis Shell (MCAS-S), and the Rainfall Reliability Wizard. There are also several tools under current development in BRS which continue with this theme. These are Water 2010 - National Water Balance and Information for Policy and Planning, the Climate Change Wizard and Climate Change Impacted Data Sets.Climate change, risk management, Environmental Economics and Policy, Risk and Uncertainty,

Protecting Shoreland and Riparian Buffers Workshop (2007)

The New Hampshire Estuaries Project (NHEP) organized and implemented a workshop on protecting shoreland and riparian buffers. A number of other organizations, including three regional planning commissions, NH Fish and Game Department, NH Department of Environmental Services, Great Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, and UNH Cooperative Extension, were involved in the planning and execution of the workshop. The workshop was designed to provide information and tools to encourage greater municipal regulatory protections for buffers. The workshop was held three times in October and November 2007 and attended by 75 people, primarily planning board and conservation commission members

Prioritising targets for biological control of weeds - a decision support tool for policy makers

This report outlines a framework of the overall process of prioritising targets for biological control and includes a decision support tool that enables policy makers to determine whether biological control is a suitable option for a proposed target species.Introduction Establishing effective biological control agents in Australia is costly in both resources and time, yet it is often a valuable component of weed control. It has been estimated that biological control of weeds in Australia has provided around $10 billion worth of agricultural protection over the past century. To date significant investment has been made in the selection process of biocontrol agents and the identification of priority weeds for biocontrol. However there is no nationally agreed system that facilitates prioritisation of weed targets for biological control. The Department of Agriculture commissioned ABARES to develop:• a framework that outlines the overall process of prioritising targets for biological control and• a decision support tool that enables policy makers to determine whether biological control is a suitable option for the proposed target species.A recent work related to the selection and prioritisation of weeds for biological control targets was published by Paynter et al 2009 (hereafter \u27Paynter\u27). Paynter was used as a basis for discussion about how to assist policy makers in assessing whether biocontrol is an appropriate option for weed control.The proposal for a decision support tool for policy makers was discussed at a workshop fully recognising that such a system would need to have a science basis that is both transparent and repeatable to be rigorous. The participants were experts in biocontrol or other weed science, state representatives and other relevant stakeholders. The proposal was outlined in a background/discussion paper and provided to participants prior to the workshop. The purpose of the paper was to provide participants with relevant background information and a proposed approach for a decision support tool for policy makers to be debated and progressed at the workshop.Aim of the workshop and background/discussion paper The workshop was held in Canberra on 4 April 2013. The objectives of the workshop were to:• discuss whether the approach based on Paynter is suitable as a decision support tool at the policy level to prioritise targets for biological control• reach a consensus amongst workshop participants on key principles that need to be considered in the prioritisation process of biological control targetsSuggestions made at the workshop are addressed in this report. Many of the concerns raised at the workshop corresponded with the common \u27core\u27 issues recorded in Paynter. These include concerns about lack of data, the tendency of the framework to overlook weeds outside the Weeds of National Significance, concerns that weightings are arbitrary, and a need for the framework to be able to anticipate emergent weeds and potential future problems. Here, those issues that are relevant to policy have been considered with the acknowledgement that remaining \u27core\u27 issues need to be addressed elsewhere

APFIC/FAO Regional Consultative Workshop: Securing sustainable small-scale fisheries: Bringing together responsible fisheries and social development, Windsor Suites Hotel, Bangkok, Thailand 68 October 2010

In the Global Overview, we attempt to view reefs in terms of the poor who are dependent on reefs for their livelihoods, how the reefs benefit the poor, how changes in the reef have impacted the lives of the poor and how the poor have responded and coped with these changes. It also considers wider responses to reef issues and how these interventions have impacted on the lives of the poor

Minutes of the CD-ROM Workshop

The workshop described in this document had two goals: (1) to establish guidelines for the CD-ROM as a tool to distribute datasets; and (2) to evaluate current scientific CD-ROM projects as an archive. Workshop attendees were urged to coordinate with European groups to develop CD-ROM, which is already available at low cost in the U.S., as a distribution medium for astronomical datasets. It was noted that NASA has made the CD Publisher at the National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC) available to the scientific community when the Publisher is not needed for NASA work. NSSDC's goal is to provide the Publisher's user with the hardware and software tools needed to design a user's dataset for distribution. This includes producing a master CD and copies. The prerequisite premastering process is described, as well as guidelines for CD-ROM construction. The production of discs was evaluated. CD-ROM projects, guidelines, and problems of the technology were discussed

System requirement report for Level 2 – national management institutions, for the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources in the Philippines

This report presents the findings from a thorough literature review, workshops, and group and individual interviews conducted by STREAM in the Philippines in November and December 2003. The ambitious scope of the report combined with the limited time frame and funding available to compile it necessitated the extensive use of secondary data, including both published and unpublished material written by staff of the agencies / organisations involved, with very limited editing of material used. All possible efforts were made to generate information in participation with the government institutions responsible for managing the fisheries, and all contributors (as well as many other stakeholders) were provided with multiple opportunities to comment on the report content. The contributors are listed on the front page of the report. (Pdf contains 56 pages)

The Metropolitan Travel Survey Archive: A Case Study in Archiving

This paper summarizes research on standards for archiving travel survey data. It then describes some of the efforts at organizing data and developing metadata. The development of metadata standards used for documenting datasets using DDI (Data Documentation Initiative) for DTD (Document Type Definitions) is described. A case, applying these approaches to a US Metropolitan Travel Survey Archive is presented. The Metropolitan Travel Survey Archive, housed at the University of Minnesota, now contains over 60 surveys from almost 30 metropolitan areas. The paper concludes with some recommendations for archiving data.Travel Surveys, Activity Surveys, Archiving

For Our Information, March & April 1955, Vol. VII, no. 7-8

An official publication of the ILR School, Cornell University, “for the information of all faculty, staff and students.